So, here is part 3 of my thoughts on creating awesomeness and moving away from what you no longer want and no longer serves you. Sometimes this road can be bumpy, but remember that at your core, you are a powerful creator, and capable of so much more than you know, so much more than you think is possible. If you consciously apply what I threw down in this little series of posts, even just in bits and pieces at first, you will be moving towards what you truly want in no time.
Show Compassion for Yoursel
Often times, we are ridiculously hard on ourselves. We are our own worst critics and that inner voice of ours can be quite the a-hole at times. How we regard ourselves when we ‘mess up’ or think about our ‘flaws’, mistakes and failures is never how we would someone else sharing her own experience with us. When talking to another about her struggles and problems, we would be sympathetic, offer encouragement, point out all the good that she has accomplished so far, and remind her of all her awesomeness.
When going about your little journey of change, remember to talk to yourself in this manner. When you find yourself struggling with something, and are feeling all down on yourself, stop and think for a minute if you were listening to a dear friend recount this same situation. What do you think you would say to her? Then say it to yourself because this point of view is just as ‘valid’ as the shitty one that tends to take over when thinking about our own life. It is all a matter of perspective and where we choose to focus our energy.
As someone who has devoted my life to this whole personal development path, I know firsthand how detrimental this lack of compassion towards ourselves can be. For a long time, I had this unrealistic idea I would become some perfect person who never messed up and was always happy. And it caused me a lot of suffering, and slowed me down quite a bit. I have made so many amazing changes, but it was slow-going at times. I have plenty of ‘flaws.’
I have finally realized it’s okay, and I want you to know it’s okay too.
It Will Feel Hard Sometimes and That’s Okay
I wish I could tell you that changing your life will be easy, and you will always feel good and excited about it. There will be plenty of this for sure, but depending on the types of changes you are trying to make, it will feel hard sometimes, like really hard…like, hard enough you may wonder if you have it in you, or if it is worth all the crap you are dealing with. This is not because it is inherently difficult, it is simply because of all the blocks we hold within.
But, if it is something you really want, and this knowing came from that deep self-reflection that provides us oh-so-many answers, then, yes, it is worth it.
Feeling fear or doubt, or the urge to just throw in the towel, is normal. It doesn’t mean you are weak. It doesn’t mean you have made a mistake, or that you are going down the ‘wrong’ path.
When moments like this strike, go back to your why. Evaluate what you have been doing, and see if you need to make any changes to your approach, or if perhaps, you need to tweak your vision a bit.
You are still dealing with lots of layers of conditioning that are not conducive to the pursuit of awesomeness, and all this junk will continue to rear its ugly head. And, when you have moments of not feeling great, the floodgates can really open, and you can feel overloaded with all the crap. Every limiting belief, bad memory and criticism rises to the surface.
You can feel really low, and the best you can do in these moments is just let yourself feel it. There is value in these trying times—you can learn a lot. You get great practice getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Acknowledge where you are. Don’t try to force yourself to feel better, and think positively when you feel like garbage. That is just denial and it makes everything worse. What you want to do is work on genuinely feeling better, and reaching for thoughts and actions that support that goal.
Get mad, cry, do whatever helps shift the emotion. When we learn to sit with our unpleasantness, and not rail against it, we feel it less intensely. We are in a better position to evaluate it, and extract the wisdom these moments contain.
Remember to Celebrate Victories and Give Credit Where Credit is Due
Like you want to remember to have compassion for yourself, you want to remember to celebrate your accomplishments, no matter how small, and give yourself credit for all the good you are doing in your efforts, to better yourself, and your life. It is easy to get caught up in where we messed up, the times we wish we would have acted differently, and all that we haven’t managed to do yet.
Naturally, our mind will go there sometimes, but we have control over how often, and how intensely. One of the best ways to counteract this tendency is to consciously focus on all the good. You may not think it is a big deal you went a whole week sticking to your exercise or eating plan, after years of slacking off, but guess what? It totally is. So celebrate it and give yourself a nice pat on the back.
You may not think it is a big deal you stuck to your goal to mediate for five minutes every morning the last two weeks, because that seems like nothing compared to how long some other people sit, but if you never did it before, that is a huge thing. Give yourself some credit.
It might help to keep a little journal where you can write down all the great things you are doing. Read over it on a regular basis to infuse yourself with motivation, and condition your mind to look at yourself in a more positive light.
Sometimes You’ll Get off Track.. Just Vow to Go Back
Guess what? You’re not perfect, and sometimes you are going to ‘mess up.’ When this happens, we tend to get into an all-or-nothing type mindset where we conclude what we want to do is just not possible We are not capable, and we might as well just give up. On an intellectual level, we know this is not true. But, what we are feeling in those very moments is very different, and we can get quite discouraged.
But, try to remember you are playing the long game here. You are looking to build a new life, and a new way of being that will stretch over a period of years and years. When you look at it in this light, these hiccups are hardly detrimental, they are just minor bumps, if you decide that is what they are.
It is possible you will have lots of starts and stops along the way, and sometimes, you may find yourself straying for an extended amount of time. Then, you may feel an urge to give it another go. Honor that urge and start again. Don’t look back on your past efforts and conclude you aren’t capable, or you’ll just get the same results again. Maybe that will happen, but maybe this will be the time when everything sticks. Eventually you’ll get there if you are serious about changing.
So, if you get a bit lazy with your healthy eating efforts, forgive yourself and just keep trying. Every day is a new day to make better food choices. If you vowed you would try to meditate, but gave up and haven’t done it in a month, but feel the pull to give it another shot, do it.
Just always go back to the goal.
Hope you enjoyed this little series and that it helped light a fire under your desires. Please let me know what you think in the comments. What are you hoping to create in your own life? Are you sometimes too hard on yourself? What are the great things about you that you sometimes don’t give yourself credit for? What have you accomplished so far in moving towards what you want? Let’s have a chat.
Hi Kelli. I agree that we can all be too hard on ourselves sometimes. Every achievement and moment of growth is worth celebrating. I also agree that in not bottling up the tough emotions, we’re freed to feel the positive ones more deeply. That’s been my journey. Being authentic to who I am, with every aspect of who I am, is so freeing. I’m happy that I’m growing, learning and moving further forward in my goals to write and be authentic. Enjoy your travels!
Hi Rachel
Thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and experience. You are so right about every moment being worth celebrating–it creates a wonderful shift in energy that brings in even more about which to feel happy! That is such an interesting insight about emotions and I totally agree with that. We make more space for the good stuff, and if we can look at it like that, we may not be as afraid of diving deeper into the more unpleasant ones. I am so glad to hear things are working out so well for you, and I’m sure they will just keep getting better. Thanks again for your thoughts!
This is good advice. From personal experience I will say that it took me years of wanting to be able to do somethings regularly before I could, but I never would have gotten there if I gave up just because of that. Meditation for example, I just couldn’t do for 30 minutes at once. But I got where I could do it for 1 minute quite often. And now I can do 20 minutes everyday, or even go to weeklong meditation retreats sometimes! If we are gentle with ourselves when we are weak, watch how we become strong!
Thanks Indigo. So glad you liked the post. My experience was the same with meditation. It took me quite a bit before I felt like it became something I ‘had’ to do everyday. Lots of periods in the beginning where I would abandon it for a long time.
If we are gentle with ourselves when we are weak, watch how we become strong!–love this! You have a great way with words!
Hi Kelli, thanks for this post. I’m feeling down now, in a bit of a doubting phase. But like you said, sometimes we get off track but we can always go back to the goal. 🙂
Hey
So glad you liked it. There are no coincidences and the information came at a time when you needed it. Doubt is natural…we all have it sometimes. Getting off track happens to the best of us. It took me quite awhile to develop some of the habits and what not that I have now, and I had lots of stops and starts. The great thing is, things can start getting better without having to master everything first. You are right..we can always go back.
Gosh, I needed this post right now.
Even though I stubbornly maintain my belief that I can be the person I want to be and live the life I want to live, there are days when that’s harder than others.
I’m definitely my own harshest critic. In my morning meditation I’ve been focusing on letting go of the need to be perfect and embracing the process of moving forward with imperfections.
I also really want to second the whole celebrating victories thing. Sometimes I feel like I’m not qualified to write about living the dream because I’m not QUITE retired to an island in Fiji yet. 😉
But then I stop and think, I have already done what so many people wish they could do. I walked away from a job & a lifestyle that I hated and had enough faith in myself to pursue my own dream with everything I have. That alone is an accomplishment. Sure, I’m hustling my butt off for freelance jobs right now but at least I have the guts to really go for it. 🙂
Thanks for the encouragement, Kelli!
Hey Mandie
So glad you liked it. Those ups and downs are normal..I still have them as I reach for bigger and bolder things; certain ‘stuff’ comes to the surface and it has to be dealt with. Setting intentions during meditation can be quite powerful. One thing to keep in mind as well as you get more into meditation, is that it is a very powerful tool for shifting and releasing energies so if you have been feeling more ‘off’ lately, that could be part of it. The gunk is rising to the surface to be cast off. I recently upped my sitting sessions and I am experiencing a bit of this myself.
The whole ‘fraud’ thing is a very common phenomenon that strikes a lot of people who try to give advice in any capacity I think. You are certainly not alone in that. I think you are very qualified to write about such things because you are right..you have done so many things that are awesome. You made huge moves that most people probably won’t ever bring themselves to do. There are infinite ways to ‘live the dream’ and there is no one set of criteria that qualifies someone to speak about how to do it. But if there were, I am confident you would make the cut.
I struggled a lot when I first started this life…lots of money troubles, uncertainty and what have you, so I know how that can be rough. Your blog is awesome–you are a really good writer and you have lots of great insights. I have no doubt that things will just continue to get better for you.
Thank you, this article really helped me. I’m a 25 year old man, and I recently have started trying to change my life. I work as a dishwasher at a bar, and the things that I really want to do are make art, compose music, and travel the world. I don’t have much education outside of high school, I recently attended one year of community college, but that is it. I was not able to attend this year because of financial problems. Because of this, I was not able to attend the art classes that I enjoyed. This made me depressed during the Summer, because I did not have any art projects to work on, neither was there any structure to my days. I ended up sleeping a lot during the day and going to work depressed. I felt like a loser with no future. It wasn’t until I read an article about self-healing that my feelings started to change. I already knew a thing or two about The Law of Attraction but not everything. So, I searched for more information on The Law of Attraction and that eventually led me to your site. I have to thank you, because your articles really help me to become more aware of my feelings and my thoughts. It’s something that I’m still learning thru trial and error.
Hi Moses
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and share some of your experience with me. Well, it sounds like you have your dreams figured out so that is really powerful thing—figuring out what we want and allowing ourselves to want can be the hard part and many people aren’t there yet. That clarity puts powerful forces in motion that can bring us what we want when we align energetically.
Those kinds of setbacks would understandably dishearten anyone, but I believe everything we experience has a lesson within it that can help us keep moving towards what we want. Had that not happened you might not have been compelled to go deeper into your work on your feelings and belief system.
LOA works, I know from what I have seen in my own life. And it is kind of crazy how easy it is…BUT, it can take time to get to a point where it feels as easy as it truly is. And, it is important to not get discouraged and just work with the process and be patient. Just work on doing whatever you can to feel good and release beliefs that are not conducive to bettering your situation.
Don’t feel pressure to make bold moves unless you have really built up that trust behind the process, or else you will just add to your stress. It is okay if you have your sights set on smaller goals right now to eventually line you up with your bigger ones.
When we really commit to big changes, trial and error comes with the territory and that’s okay. Just always keep your intentions in your mind, and let the Universe work its magic. You just need to know the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ will be taken care of.
Because we attract based on feeling, if our feelings change, our experience has to change, it has no choice. So, it doesn’t matter what your life has been like up until this point in terms of what is possible for the future.
Hi KC,
Allowing your low energy stuff to come in, quickly, so you can release it, really is the quickest and easiest way to focus on the good. I feel if I can simply embrace my down moments I’m able to focus on the good 98% of the time or more….and yep, you can see that I genuinely do focus on the good, most of the time, because it seems easier and easier for me to do. The secret is to make it a habit, seeing the blessing in everything but of course, to allow your crying, misery and grief, to flood in, and out, when these feelings arise.
My biggest blow ups during the years always preceded some massive shift because I finally stopped lying to myself, and stopped resisting my low energies, and let them flow out. After you release the low energy stuff that that much less of a low energy person, and then, you’re a higher energy person, so you can tune into high energy stuff, and appreciate it, more effortlessly. Does that make sense guys? I hope so, because it’s basic physics, really. Let go low, become more high, tune into high, see the good.
We’re not retired to a life of island hopping by doing comfy, safe and sound stuff. We felt like shit sometimes, and flipped out, but we always knew we were freeing ourselves, and learning how to trust in the Universe, and doing all the things that influence some to deem us lucky, or fortunate. We simply dealt with our mental trash head on, regularly, as we were expanding our awareness, and in the process, we’ve been purifying ourselves, being more light, feeling better, and seeing good. Fun journey, right Kelli? 😉
Brilliant post. Your simple style is appreciated, and I know your happiness consulting services will continue to expand because you’re just so darn good at simplifying tough to grasp concepts, so anybody can embrace and apply them, to promote their happiness.
Thanks KC! Tweeting.
Signing off from Savusavu, Fiji….yes, 1 room over.
Ryan
Hey Ryan
Thanks so much for such an insightful post. You make such an excellent point about letting in the yuck so you can ultimately release it. When we keep denying and pushing it down further, it just kind of festers there. You are quite right about all the stuff we went through to live this life. It wasn’t always easy but oh so worth it!
Hey Kelli,
I’m very happy you talked about this, because the down moments of using the law of attraction are some of the least talked-about parts of it, yet moving through them is so crucial to being consistent, and thus successful, in manifesting what you want.
For me, the down moments are very much linked to the idea of being “perfect.” Not very long ago I thought that if I was down or frustrated, especially if I didn’t know why, that I was doing it wrong. I don’t know what it was that changed. Perhaps listening to Abraham-Hicks say, “You can’t get it wrong and you’ll never get it done,” day in and day out for a year finally got it through my thick skull. See, there I am doing it again 🙂
I appreciate that you use the word “gentle”, and I think that is the real key. I like the idea of talking to yourself as you would to a dear friend, not some drill seargant who expects 110% out of his recruits. I’ve been incorporating the concept of gentle more and more in my daily manifesting practice and now I really think this is the approach to take to life. I’ve found that by focusing on gentle, easy steps to the life you want, the law of attraction responds in kind. It’s funny, because this is very much against the drama-heavy narrative of movies where the main character has X time to fulfill Y task otherwise they’ll LOSE EVERYTHING. In contrast to that, I like the idea that it’s a practice and a process, and the journey is the point, not the goal.
But I also realize that trying to communicate that to someone who is very goal oriented (like a certain someone I know very intimately) can result in frustration. That’s why – as you say – it’s important to celebrate the victories. Though I just threw movies under the bus I’m reminded of a quote from Batman Begins:
“Why do we fall Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up again.”
What do you say to people who have flowcharts and graphs stationed around their house like religious objects? How do you stop obsessing over goals?
Hey Chris
I’m glad the idea of being kinder to yourself resonated with you. I think that is something we could all stand to do a bit better. With all the stuff floating around in our mind, and the momentum we have built behind negative thoughts and beliefs, we automatically go into criticism mode when it comes to evaluating how we are handling a particular situation, or a choice we made. We truly are our harshest critic.
I think one of the reasons we stumble with LOA is because we observe so many successful people talk about how they worked so hard, and suffered for so long before getting what they wanted, and then we think that we must have to do that too, that getting what we want means doing a whole lot of things we don’t want. And naturally, we can still get results that way, but the process is more painful and will go more slowly. We set up a lot of obstacles for ourselves because we have this subconscious belief that things have to be hard, that we are the underdog and have to fight our way to the top. And, the Universe has no choice but to mirror that all back to us.
Obviously, I don’t know this person at all, but I can’t imagine someone who is like that is taking this approach from a place of ease and feeling good. It sounds like someone who feels the need to have a large degree of control over their life and again, this will get results but it probably won’t feel as good or come as quickly. Whatever results come to this person, however, is still all about LOA and not the specific actions. So, if taking these actions helps create that expectation that they will get what they want, they will align with their desired outcome.
And, as anyone who has gotten results from consciously working with LOA knows, it is about our feelings and the expectation we will get what we want, so so long as that is all good, various approaches will work. The speed at which we get what we want will certainly vary as many people have that expectation but engage in all sorts of behavior that increases resistance and holds beliefs like ‘no pain, no gain.’
I think too, we can set some goals without getting too specific about them, and feeling we must take X,Y and Z action every day, week or whatever to achieve them. For example, I have set certain goals I would like to achieve with my coaching, but I don’t feel pressured to make myself do certain things that I feel are ‘necessary’ lest I will not get the results I want. I still focus on keeping my vibe high and acting from a place of inspiration and not fear.
It can be challenging when you are with someone who does not buy into this type of belief system. If you are feeling challenged by how this person approaches life, we all know what causes that. Our own insecurity about what we believe and how we move through life, and that is never fun! But, this can be a great exercise to examine what is happening internally and what beliefs you have to work on shifting. And, taking action can be a good form of energy work if it helps you feel good about moving towards what you want, so long as we don’t get attached to any of those channels. For example, someone looking for a job may feel good about sending out some resumes and emailing contacts for some leads, but all the while knowing this job could come to them through a million different channels.
Thanks Kelli for this wonderful insight. I realize I’m typing online so I didn’t exactly communicate what I meant by, “knowing someone intimately.” My original intent was to be funny because I felt I was obviously talking about myself. However, since you worded your response as though you were talking about a separate person, it gave me some wonderful understanding of my own behavior. It can be difficult to give yourself a vibrational diagnostic, so it was immensely helpful to hear your perspective on why someone holds fast to goals in the first place.
Of course it’s out of fear! And I love how you so elegantly put that, though you do have certain goals that you’d like to achieve, they are there to help facilitate your inspiration, not force you to take action you don’t want to take. So then, you still act from a place of inspiration and fun towards the achievement of those goals. I would imagine you’d be great at coaching. This quote particularly resonated with me: ” Taking action can be a good form of energy work if it helps you feel good about moving towards what you want, so long as you don’t get attached to any of those channels.” I find that I really enjoy taking some action towards my goals and I think the belief that is causing resistance is that there has to be X amount of effort for Y amount of reward. Instead, a better belief would be,”I enjoy taking X inspired action towards my goals and I know that everything else will work itself out.” So, when trying to expand, instead of the limited perspective of, “I took X action and Y resulted through Z channel – what is the better perspective? That may be a rhetorical question. 🙂
Hey Chris
That is so funny…you are right, things can be lost in translation when communicating online. The quotation marks definitely brought that across thinking about it now, but obviously I missed it at the time! Given your comments so far, I find it quite surprising that you were talking about yourself, but then again, we all still hold onto some of our ‘logical’ ways of going about things! Our brain can put up quite the fight. I enjoy taking action too—as awesome as it would be to be able to sit around and do nothing, it is fun to take action. Just sitting around having everything come to us sounds good in theory but it probably wouldn’t feel as rewarding. Though I am certainly open to doing only the fun stuff that feels light and easy.
I heard a great metaphor from an LOA coach talking about action and she likened inspired action to your cooking with your grandmother and her letting you do just the stuff you liked. She certainly didn’t need our help, but she knew you would find it fun so she let you frost the cookies or peel the potatoes. I really liked that. It sounds to me like you have a pretty good grip on the goal thing but like all of us, there is that part of our brain that just won’t cooperate! So long as most of us is there, that is enough to get things moving in my experience.